How should deontological theories that prohibit actions of type K — such as intentionally killing an innocent person — deal with cases of uncertainty as to whether a particular action is of type K? Frank Jackson and Michael Smith, who raise this problem in their paper "Absolutist Moral Theories and Uncertainty" (2006), focus on a case where a skier is about to cause the death of ten innocent people — we don’t know for sure whether on purpose or not — (...) by causing an avalanche; and we can only save the people by shooting the skier. One possible deontological attitude towards such uncertainty is what Jackson and Smith call the threshold view, according to which whether or not the deontological constraint applies depends on our degree of (justified) certainty meets a given threshold. Jackson and Smith argue against the threshold view that it leads to implausible paradoxical moral dilemmas in a special kind of case. In this response, we show that the threshold view can avoid these implausible moral dilemmas, as long as the relevant deontological constraint is grounded in individualistic patient-based considerations, such as what an individual person is entitled to object to. (shrink)

The stability theory of first order theories was initiated by Saharon Shelah in 1969. The classification of abstract elementary classes was initiated by Shelah, too. In several papers, he introduced non-forking relations. Later, Shelah [17, II] introduced the good non-forking frame, an axiomatization of the non-forking notion.We improve results of Shelah on good non-forking frames, mainly by weakening the stability hypothesis in several important theorems, replacing it by the almost λ-stability hypothesis: The number of types over a model of cardinality (...) λ is at most λ+.We present conditions on Kλ, that imply the existence of a model in Kλ+n for all n. We do this by providing sufficiently strong conditions on Kλ, that they are inherited by a properly chosen subclass of Kλ+. What are these conditions? We assume that there is a ‘non-forking’ relation which satisfies the properties of the non-forking relation on superstable first order theories. Note that here we deal with models of a fixed cardinality, λ.While in Shelah [17, II] we assume stability in λ, so we can use brimmed models, here we assume almost stability only, but we add an assumption: The conjugation property.In the context of elementary classes, the superstability assumption gives the existence of types with well-defined dimension and the ω-stability assumption gives the existence and uniqueness of models prime over sets. In our context, the local character assumption is an analog to superstability and the density of the class of uniqueness triples with respect to the relation ≼bs is the analog to ω-stability. (shrink)

Structuring Sense explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate over three volumes, of which this is the first, that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entry to syntactic structure, from memory of words to manipulation of rules. Its reformulation of how grammar and lexicon interact has profound implications for linguistic, philosophical, and psychological theories about human mind and language. Hagit Borer departs from both language specific constructional (...) approaches and lexicalist approaches to argue that universal hierarchical structures determine interpretation, and that language variation emerges from the morphological and phonological properties of inflectional material. In Name Only applies this radical approach to nominal structure. Integrating research in syntax, semantics, and morphology, the author argues that nominal structure is based on the syntactic realization of semantic notions such as classifier, quantity, and reference. In the process she seeks to do away with lexical ambiguity and type-shifting. Among the topics she considers are the interpretation of proper names, the mass-count distinction, the weak-strong interpretation of quantifiers, partitive and measure phrases, and the structural representation of the definite article. In the process she explores inter-language variation through the properties of the morpho-phonological system. The languages discussed include English, Chinese, Italian, and Hebrew. (shrink)

There are many factors that may affect the analysis of ethical problems: the physical acts that occur, the relevant history, verbal communication, contracts, etc. One factor that can be difficult to incorporate is the role that socials norms play. This is because norms can vary widely between societies, and even within societies individuals are not usually consciously aware of the norms that they act upon. This paper examines how norms can effect ethical problems and gives one approach for investigating their (...) effect. (shrink)

If property is defined as something over which an individual should have exclusive control, then the traditional notion of property must be abandoned. Specifically, the idea that a physical object is someone’s property fails to meet the definition given. This paper examines why an individual should not always have exclusive control over physical things, and, if not objects, what exactly an individual should have exclusive control over.The proposed solution is that property be delineated not by physical boundaries, but by human (...) action. This does not include all action, for scarcity makes certain actions mutually exclusive. Therefore, property is conceived of as proper action, i.e., action consistent with the non-aggression principle. Those physical objects traditionally considered property are then simply means of proper action.The benefits of this change in perspective are then examined with regard to production, exchange, aggression and other related topics. (shrink)

There are many factors that may affect the analysis of ethical problems: the physical acts that occur, the relevant history, verbal communication, contracts, etc. One factor that can be difficult to incorporate is the role that socials norms play. This is because norms can vary widely between societies, and even within societies individuals are not usually consciously aware of the norms that they act upon. This paper examines how norms can effect ethical problems and gives one approach for investigating their (...) effect. (shrink)

In his paper, “Is There an ‘Anomalous’ Section of the Laffer Curve?”, Walter Block describes some situations in which it appears that a libertarian should violate the non-aggression principle. To rectify this, Block proposes a different perspective on libertarianism which he calls punishment theory. This paper argues that no new theory is needed, as the non-aggression principle can be used to resolve the apparent conundrums.

The human body shield problem involves an apparent dilemma for a libertarian, forcing him to choose between his own death and the death of an innocent person. This paper argues that the non-aggression principle permits a forceful response against the property of innocent individuals when a conflict is initiated with that property. In other words, a libertarian may shoot the hostage in order to save himself.

In every search for knowledge one presupposes that there is more to the phenomenal field one studies than what meets the eye. A play between those phenomena thatpresentthemselves to an observer andabsententities or phenomena, and the orders, structures or laws that govern these, lies at the heart of anysearchfor empirical knowledge. On the basis of this play of presence and absence read by a particular discourse into a more or less defined phenomenal field, phenomena are constitutedquasigns for that discourse's participants.

The ArgumentMontaigne'sEssayswere an exercise in self-knowledge carried out for more than twenty years in Montaigne's private library located in his mansion near Bordeaux. The library was a place of solitude as well as a place of knowledge, a kind ofheterotopiain which two sets of spatial relations coexisted and interacted: the social and the epistemic. The spatial demarcation and arrangement of the site – in both the physical and the symbolic sense – were necessary elements of the constitution of Montaigne's self (...) as an object of knowledge and as a subject of discourse. The spatial setting of the library made possible and constrained certain discursive patterns through which words were systematically linked to things, authority was correlated with access and visibility, and the epistemological was coordinated with the social. In this sense, Montaigne's library resembled other places of empirical knowledge of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which subjects of knowledge were constituted, objects were posited in their proper phenomenal fields and the entire structure of intellectual activity was reproduced through various cultural mechanisms. But the initial similarity is only apparent. The private library never became a culturally recognized place for knowledge of the self; its heterotopic structure could not have been reproduced without the concrete presence of an author and of a self, while Montaigne's skepticism systematically undermined the possibility of the author's position and of the identity of the self. (shrink)

A generation ago scientific ideas floated free in the air, as historians gazed up at them in wonder and admiration. From time to time, historians agreed, the ideas that made up the body of scientific truth became incarnate: they were embedded into the fleshly forms of human culture and attached to particular times and places. How this incarnation occurred was a great mystery. How could spirit be made flesh? How did the transcendent and the timeless enter the forms of the (...) mundane and the contingent? Platonist and providentialist perspectives offered ways of speaking about the mystery, but, in general, it remained unresolved at the core of orthodox idealist historiography.1. (shrink)

This is the first book-length examination of the impact Leo Strauss’ immigration to the United States had on this thinking. Adi Armon weaves together a close reading of unpublished seminars Strauss taught at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s with an interpretation of his later works, all of which were of course written against the backdrop of the Cold War. First, the book describes the intellectual environment that shaped the young Strauss’ worldview in the Weimar Republic, tracing (...) those aspects of his thought that changed and others that remained consistent up until his immigration to America. Armon then goes on to explore the centrality of Karl Marx to Strauss’s intellectual biography. By analyzing an unpublished seminar Strauss taught with Joseph Cropsey at the University of Chicago in 1960, Armon shows how Strauss’ fragmentary, partial engagement with Marx in writing obscured the important role that Marxism actually played as an intellectual challenge to his later political thinking. Finally, the book explores the manifestations of Straussian doctrine in postwar America through reading Strauss’ The City and Man as a representative of his political teaching. (shrink)

A critical edition of "Tahdhīb Al-Akhlāq", a treatise ascribed to the Jacobite theologian, logician, and translator in Abbasid period, Yahya ibn Adi.

Traditionally dated from the 8th to the 14th century, historians generally agree on the period of the golden age of Islamic civilization. They count that the keys to this civilizational achievement laid on the flourishing educational institutions, scientific findings, and the births of influential Muslim scholars. This article tries to reframe the significance of education in the creation of Islamic golden age and offer a brief reminder to the importance of education for contemporary Muslim societies. It is a bibliographical study (...) for the materials for the discussion are taken from books, journal articles, and other written sources related to the topic. The collected data were then analyzed by content analysis. This article argues that the state policies on education is the key for the past Muslim golden age. Scientific culture ranging from namely research tradition, translation tradition, reading tradition to scientific habitus are essential in the making of Muslim golden age. This historical records reserves as a reminder for contemporary Muslim to reestablish the past golden age that lies on the reformation of educational system. (shrink)

Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, -1641 -- View on eschatology. ; Resurrection (Islam).

The ideas of freedom, justice, democracy and secularism are the main themes in the study of political philosophy. This article attempts to explain Abdolkarim Soroush's political philosophy with the boundaries of themes regarding freedom, justice, secluralism and democracy. Abolkarim Soroush is a thinker in the contemporary Islamic world.

Portrait of Jewish American philosopher and historian Hans Kohn.

Nietzsche’s road to skepticism differed from that of many skeptics who preceded him. His skepticism did not arise from the view that it is impossible to bridge the gap between subjective impressions and the objective world. Comparison with Hume will serve to clarify this point. Hume’s skepticism was based on several basic assumptions amongst which of central importance was the assumption that the only immediate data of consciousness are "impressions and ideas." He was led to skepticism by his belief that (...) the transition from the realm of subjective impressions to an objective ordered world of physical substances could not be rationally justified. Thus, when in his skeptical frame of mind, Hume would say that knowledge of the material world is unattainable. However, he never doubted that we know our own here and now impressions, for he assumed that they are directly given to consciousness. (shrink)

Structuring Sense explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate over three volumes, of which this is the second, that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entry to syntactic structure, from memory of words to manipulation of rules. Its reformulation of how grammar and lexicon interact has profound implications for linguistic, philosophical, and psychological theories about human mind and language. Hagit Borer departs from both language specific constructional (...) approaches and lexicalist approaches to argue that universal hierarchical structures determine interpretation, and that language variation emerges from the morphological and phonological properties of inflectional material. The Normal Course of Events applies this radical approach to event structure. Integrating research results in syntax, semantics, and morphology, the author shows that argument structure is based on the syntactic realization of semantic event units. The topics she addresses include the structure of internal arguments and of telic and atelic interpretations, accusative and partitive case, perfective and imperfective marking, the unaccusative-unergative distinction, existential interpretation and post-verbal subjects, and resultative constructions. The languages discussed include English, Catalan, Finnish, Hebrew, Czech, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. (shrink)

In their cognitive theory of emotion, Schachter and Singer proposed that feelings are separable from what they are about. As a test, they induced feelings of arousal by injecting epinephrine and then molded them into different emotions. They illuminated how feelings in one moment lead into the next to form a stream of conscious experience. We examine the construction of emotion in a similar spirit. We use the sensory integration process to understand how the brain combines disparate sources of information (...) to construct both perceptual and emotional models of the world even as the world continues to change. We emphasize two processes: affect segmentation (isolating the felt component of an emotion) and affect integration (recombining this feeling with its object). (shrink)

This article puts forth a novel framework for understanding conceptions of disability using six models of disability: the “Social,” “Medical,” “Tragedy,” “Affirmative,” “Minority” and “Universal” models. It analyzes these models as three opposed pairs, each pertaining to a distinct aspect of the multifaceted experience of disability: (1) the cause of disabled people’s social disadvantage and exclusion; (2) the effect of impairment on individuals’ quality of life and well-being; (3) the dichotomy or lack thereof between disabled and nondisabled people. The article (...) argues that although each model is incompatible with its opposed pair, it is compatible with the remaining four models, in the sense that there is no contradiction in holding the views associated with these models at the same time. It therefore concludes that conceptions of disability are best understood as clusters of views on disability that are associated with compatible models. (shrink)

A new moral theory from an Israeli philosopher and activist emphasizing theexistential and political nature of evil.

The notion $J$ is independent in $(M,M_0,N)$ was established by Shelah, for an AEC (abstract elementary class) which is stable in some cardinal $\lambda$ and has a non-forking relation, satisfying the good $\lambda$-frame axioms and some additional hypotheses. Shelah uses independence to define dimension. Here, we show the connection between the continuity property and dimension: if a non-forking satisfies natural conditions and the continuity property, then the dimension is well-behaved. As a corollary, we weaken the stability hypothesis and two additional (...) hypotheses, that appear in Shelah's theorem. (shrink)

The conflicting findings from the few studies conducted with regard to gender differences in the recognition of vocal expressions of emotion have left the exact nature of these differences unclear. Several investigators have argued that a comprehensive understanding of gender differences in vocal emotion recognition can only be achieved by replicating these studies while accounting for influential factors such as stimulus type, gender-balanced samples, number of encoders, decoders, and emotional categories. This study aimed to account for these factors by investigating (...) whether emotion recognition from vocal expressions differs as a function of both listeners' and speakers' gender. A total of N = 290 participants were randomly and equally allocated to two groups. One group listened to words and pseudo-words, while the other group listened to sentences and affect bursts. Participants were asked to categorize the stimuli with respect to the expressed emotions in a fixed-choice response format. Overall, females were more accurate than males when decoding vocal emotions, however, when testing for specific emotions these differences were small in magnitude. Speakers' gender had a significant impact on how listeners' judged emotions from the voice. The group listening to words and pseudo-words had higher identification rates for emotions spoken by male than by female actors, whereas in the group listening to sentences and affect bursts the identification rates were higher when emotions were uttered by female than male actors. The mixed pattern for emotion-specific effects, however, indicates that, in the vocal channel, the reliability of emotion judgments is not systematically influenced by speakers' gender and the related stereotypes of emotional expressivity. Together, these results extend previous findings by showing effects of listeners' and speakers' gender on the recognition of vocal emotions. They stress the importance of distinguishing these factors to explain recognition ability in the processing of emotional prosody. (shrink)

Although random mutation is central to models of evolutionary change, a lack of clarity remains regarding the conceptual possibilities for thinking about the nature and role of mutation in evolution. We distinguish several claims at the intersection of mutation, evolution, and directionality and then characterize a previously unrecognized category: complex conditioned mutation. Empirical evidence in support of this category suggests that the historically famous fluctuation test should be revisited, and new experiments should be undertaken with emerging experimental techniques to facilitate (...) detecting mutation rates within specific loci at an ultra‐high, individual base pair resolution. (shrink)

Under the title The Reformation of Morals , the tenth-century Syrian Orthodox scholar Yahya ibn 'Adi offered encouragement to the effort to promote moral perfection, especially among kings and other members of the social elite: his tract, on the social virtues and vices, gives extensive advice about the cultivation of the former and the extirpation of the latter. Where there are many echoes of Hellenistic moral philosophy in his presentation, the topical profile of the work and the language the author (...) uses reveal his participation in the Baghdad circle of philosophers and intellectuals--both Christian and Muslim--who were responsible for much that has come to be regarded as typical of the classical culture of the Islamic world. In fact, this text has occasionally been attributed to one or another famous Muslim author. It now stands as an important Christian contribution, in Arabic, to a strand of moral philosophy that is an integral component of the intellectual tradition of the world of Islam. (shrink)

Issues concerning UG access for L2 acquisition as formulated by Epstein et al. are misleading as well as poorly discussed. UG accessibility can only be fully evaluated with respect to the steady state gram mar reached by the learner. The steady state for LI learners is self evidently the adult grammar in the speech community. For L2 learners, however, the steady state is not obvious. Yet, without its clear characterization, debates concerning stages of L2 acquisition and direct and indirect UG (...) accessibility cannot be resolved. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS HUME A SCEPTIC ABOUT INDUCTION? On a Would-be Revolution in the Interpretation of Hume's Philosophy The history of philosophy does not abound with great philosophers. But the number of those whose preoccupation is with the interpretation of the great philosophers' works is overwhelming. It is not surprising, therefore, that time and again we come upon arguments to the effect that a great philosopher has never been properly understood. (...) What, after all, could better justify one in adding still another paper or book to the number of works published yearly on any great philosopher, than the claim that one put forward a new interpretation; and what could be a more revolutionary interpretation than that which claims that a certain philosophy has been misunderstood altogether. This is not to say that real revolutions in the interpretation of major philosophical works are a priori precluded. It could possibly happen that generations of scholars have again and again been mistaken as to a philosopher's basic intentions. But one should certainly check and double-check any such revolutionary interpretation lest one fall a victim to it. In what follows I shall discuss a recent revolutionary interpretation concerning Hume's attitude toward induction. Hume scholars in the past have been at variance over many a question, but they all agreed that Hume was the first to present the problem of the justification of induction systematically. They also agreed that Hume tried to prove that induction cannot be justified: there is no convincing argument which could (without begging the question) demonstrate that inductively based predictions and theories are reasonable. According to this traditional view Hume's attitude to induction was of course sceptical. But lately T. Beauchamp and T. Mappes argued that this view was totally mistaken. They claim that Hume never grappled with the problem which came to be called the problem of the justification of induction; actually it does not appear in his writings. The view that Hume was bent on proving the impossibility of such a justification is simply erroneous. According to these philosophers had Hume discussed this problem at all he might well have either argued with Strawson that it was a pseudo-problem or tried with Reichenbach to justify induction pragmatically. If this interpretation is correct, we must conclude that the traditional view of Hume as a sceptical philosopher who denied the rationality of inductive inferences is false to the 2 point of being a mere fabrication. I shall analyse here some of the arguments advanced by Beauchamp and Mappes in order to expose some of their weak points. I shall try to show that however revolutionary their interpretation, it is only a would-be revolution. If I still find it worthwhile to discuss it at length, it is because their interpretation - as erroneous as it is raises a very important question about the consistency of Hume's philosophy. My aim is not merely to expose some of the vulnerable points of what I shall call the "revolutionary interpretation" but also to deal with the fundamental question it raises. II Beauchamp and Mappes argue that it never occurred to Hume to dispute the rationality of induction. He could doubt whether certain inductive inferences could pass the test of the established institutional standards of inductive reasoning, but the "external problem" of the justifiability of the entire institution of inductive reasoning was never raised by him. This interpretation is based on two kinds of arguments: the one, a general argument, has to do with the principles of Hume's philosophy and the other with textual considerations. According to the general argument the traditional view that Hume doubted the rationality of the empiricalinductive method is incompatible with well-known facts about Hume, such as his use of this very method, or his assertion that it was the major innovation of the Treatise. "Are we to believe", Beauchamp and Mappes ask, "that the most influential figure in modern empiricism, who wrote a Treatise using the empirical method, binds himself to a procedure whose conclusions cannot be given rational justification of any kind?"3 The textual underpinnings of the revolutionary interpretation are of two kinds: on the negative side it is maintained that... (shrink)